P5 Commonly Misspelled Words

As Term 1 ends, we have completed testing our P5 students on the Commonly Misspelled Words list. Twice a year, students are given spelling lists. At the start of the year, they are tested on Commonly Misspelled Words list and in Term 3, they are tested on PSLE Editing List taken from 2017 – 2023/2-24. That is not all. Twice a month, students are also given Editing words to learn as spelling. In this day and electronic age, is spelling really that important? Yes, it is.

With the changes in the PSLE 2025 format, Editing is now out of 10 marks – 5 for spelling and 5 for grammar. While 5 marks may not seem like a lot, being able to spell commonly misspelled words is a great advantage to students. This is because components such as Editing, Synthesis and Transformation and Comprehension Cloze rely heavily on how well a student spells a word. For example, the student may know the answer in the cloze but unfortunately spells it wrong.

It is the same for Composition. A student may have good ideas and is descriptive in her writing. However, if the compo is peppered with spelling mistakes, a lot of marks will be subtracted from Language.

Below is the list of commonly misspelled words. We break up the list into weekly spelling words to test our P5 students. You can do the same at home. For more Paper 2 materials — including vocabulary, editing, and commonly tested word lists — check out the Primary English Tuition • Paper 2 section for a deeper dive into resources that align with exam trends.

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P5 Commonly Misspelled Words

1. athlete
2. athletics
3. aggressive
4. authorize
5. accumulate
6. ascend
7. amateur
8. ageing
9. acquaintance
10. conscience
11. convenient
12. conscious
13. unconscious
14. cigarette
15. diarrhoea
16. dissatisfied
17. disastrous
18. dining
19. desperate
20. dilemma
21. excitement
22. embarrass
23. especially
24. environment
25. exaggerate
26. exhilarate
27. enclosure
28. familiar
29. foreigner
30. government
31. horrified
32. interview
33. inevitable
34. irresistible
35. maintenance
36. manoeuvre
37. noticeable
38. nausea
39. opponents
40. occasion
41. occurrence
42. panicked
43. perseverance
44. pronunciation
45. pastime
46. paralyze
47. possession
48. profession
49. perspiration
50. receive
51. schedule
52. separate
53. sympathise
54. sincerely
55. scene
56. sufficient
57. severely
58. unanimous
59. victorious
60. villain
61. whether
62. wrinkly